Two Victorian Liberal Party staffers have been sacked following revelations that they have been involved in disseminating very damaging information about Opposition Leader, Ted Baillieu and other members of both the State and Federal Liberal Parties, via a blog.

The blog, first posted last year and only removed last week, has been regularly displaying personal and vitriolic attacks on various Liberal politicians from within the party headquarters – today’s The Age gives a fair sampling.

Blogs can be extremely destructive. (I withdrew from Barney Z’s The Religious Write at The Age for this reason)

Fortunately we seem to keep it clean on the SydAng forum with the Moderators vigilant, but the temptation is to write things that we wouldn’t necessarily say to someone face to face. “Do unto others what you would have them do to you” seems to be the way forward, and to quickly apologise for any hurt whether intended or unintended must always be the rule.

Any more thoughts?

Is this forum whistle clean?

My boss contributes to the forums almost as much as I do, and certainly reads them as much (which is possibly why he advertised my job on here and how I found it).  Perhaps everyone else should assume that their bosses are on here too-would that lead us to change what we write?

I’ve always assumed my bosses are reading.

As a general rule I think it’s wise not to post while angry, and to write in a tone that I would use face-to-face, and apologizing for unintended offence.

Mind you, if a member of a Burmese junta logs into these forums, and sees me or someone else criticizing their dictatorial inhumanity for not allowing aid to get through to those who need it, then yah boo sucks to them and I hope they weep tears of bitter grief, before changing their policy. A sharp tone is sometimes fitting.

Fair point.

Luther permitted himself the odd sharp comment, as did Christ. But then we are not Christ and our anger is rarely righteous.

Another thing to keep in mind is the impact of surfing the blogosphere… I read a bunch of right-wing, warming denying stuff last week, and when I finally arrived at an old mate’s blog — and I know this bit is going to be particularly hard to believe — I BLEW UP at his post. Sarcasm, ranting, even “not being nice” were all used.

This cartoon illustrates me that night…

I ended up mailing this guy an actual hard copy letter to say how sorry I am (along with a little present to show I was really really sorry).

I suggest blogging breaks now and then, especially when hitting the blogs we disagree with.

Now, back to being completely gorgeous....

One thing I’ve noticed is that blogs-forums can train perfectly in being passive-aggressive.

“Well if you think that, then I won’t ever be back ...”

This is already an eminently ‘Christian’ way to be ungodly - because we fool ourselves that we ‘did nothing.’ We feel guilty about cursing someone, but not about wilful neglect. Thus I think fora can really help develop this standard church disease into a full-scale epidemic.

well Chris if that is what you think then I don’t think I can continue in this discussion ....oh...um...nevermind.